Lasagne
Course:
Dinner
Total Time:
3 hours
Ingredients
White Sauce
- 500 millilitres Milk (whole)
- 1 Onion
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 50 grams Butter
- 50 grams Plain Flour
- Salt (to taste)
- Black Pepper (to taste)
- Garlic Powder (to taste; optional)
- Pinch Nutmeg
Meat Sauce
- 4 tablespoons Olive Oil
- 500 grams Beef Mince
- 2 Carrot
- 1 Onion
- 2 cloves Garlic
- 1 Red Pepper (and/or courgette, cauliflower)
- 400 millilitres Beef Stock (300-500 acceptable)
- 500 grams Passata
- 2 teaspoons Sugar
- 11⁄2 teaspoon Salt
- 1⁄4 teaspoons Black Pepper
- 11⁄2 teaspoon Dried Basil
- 1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
- 2 Bay Leaf
Assembly
- 12 Lasagne Sheets
- 250 grams Mozzarella (low moisture kind)
Notes
Start the white sauce earlier than you think. 7 is good temp.
Steps
Infuse Milk for the White Sauce
- Peel and halve the onion.
- Bring the milk to a boil in a small saucepan with the onion and bay leaf. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse until we're ready to finish the sauce.
Prepare the Meat Sauce
- Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan or casserole and cook 500g beef mince until browned all over.
- Once browned, stir and break/mash the mince into very small pieces as it cooks. All the water should eventually cook off. At that point, the meat will start sticking to the bottom more so make sure you keep stirring it well.
- Remove the pan from the heat and move the meat to a bowl when it's browned enough (personal preference but don't overdo it).
- Heat more olive oil in the pan we that we cooked the meat in and add diced veggies and garlic. Saute veg until most of the moisture has cooked out (hissing noise from the water evaporation should be replaced by a crackling sound).
- In the meantime, prepare 300-500ml of beef stock. The amount doesn't matter too much, you'll just have
to cook the sauce longer the more stock you add, so just follow the instructions for the beef stock cube/pod. - Lower or remove from the heat completely. Add the meat back into the pan. Add 500g passata and beef stock. Stir well until everything is combined, then increase the heat to medium/medium-high.
- Add granulated sugar, salt, pepper, dried basil leaves, Italian seasoning and bay leaf. Stir well until everything is combined again and bring to a simmer.
- Reduce heat if needed to keep it cooking at a slow simmer. Partially cover with a lid, allowing water to evaporate and cook for 35-45 minutes, until it thickens up. Stir the sauce occasionally as it cooks. Some smaller watery pools are fine, anything more than that, keep simmering. It also shouldn't be too dry so just keep an eye on it
after ~35 minutes. - When the sauce is close to being done, taste it and add more salt or other seasoning if needed, as it likely won't be salty enough. Don't overdo it though as it will reduce further in the oven and could end up being too salty.
Meanwhile: Prepare the White Sauce
While the meat sauce is cooking start preparing the white sauce:
- Melt the butter in another saucepan, then add the plain flour. Stir continuously until roux forms. Continue cooking for 2 mins.
- Remove the onion and bay leaf from the milk and discard them.
- Add the infused milk to the roux gradually, stirring as you go, until you get a smooth sauce. Cook for 5-10 mins, stirring continuously and making sure to scrape the corners of the saucepan, until the sauce has thickened. Should happen around ~83°C.
- Remove from heat and season to taste (salt, pepper, nutmeg).
- A skin will form on the sauce as it cools unless you stir it constantly. This is fine, you can just stir it back
in right before using it. If you don't want this to happen, you can cover the surface of the white sauce
with some cling film while it's still hot (as-in, it should be touching it). You'll lose some sauce to that later unless you scrape it all off the cling film.
Assemble the Lasagne
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan. The lasagne shouldn't stick to ceramic/glass oven dishes but you can lightly oil it if you want to be safe.
- Pour some hot (but not scorching hot - you'll be dipping your fingers into it) water into a large bowl, enough to fit a few lasagne sheets.
- Dip 4-5 lasagne sheets into the water and leave them there until we need them. Don't stack the sheets on top of each other in the water because they could stick together and you'll never get them apart again. Instead, stack
them in an X pattern. - Spoon one third of the meat sauce into the dish. If you want thicker top layers then add a bit less on the bottom.
- Drizzle over roughly one ladle-worth of white sauce, then cover with lasagne sheets. Press down on the sheets gently to spread the meat sauce evenly. Break the sheets as needed to cover the entire surface without overlap.
- Add a new set of lasagne sheets to the bowl with hot water. Spoon more meat sauce into the dish and cover with more lasagne sheets. Repeat until you have three layers of pasta. At this point, the layers from bottom to top should be:
- Meat sauce + ladle of white sauce
- Lasagne sheets
- Meat sauce
- Lasagne sheets
- Meat sauce
- Lasagne sheets
- Cover with the remaining white sauce, making sure you can’t see any pasta poking through.
- Scatter shredded mozzarella over the top.
- Bake for 45 mins until the top is bubbling and lightly browned. If the cheese is starting to brown too much or is close to burning, cover with foil.
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Other references:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/classic-lasagne-0
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/white-sauce
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/23600/worlds-best-lasagna/ (seasoning)
Source: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/classic- lasagne-0